


Future

by Pi (Rhea)



Category: Clover - CLAMP
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-09
Updated: 2018-03-09
Packaged: 2019-03-28 23:38:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13914618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhea/pseuds/Pi
Summary: Su rarely imagines the future.





	Future

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Dreamwidth in 2011 as part of the Yuri Challenge
> 
> Prompt: Clover, Oruha/Suu, future
> 
> Reference to character death, but no more than the original story

Su rarely imagines the future. There is so much beyond the bars of her cage and she sees so little of it. It is hard to imagine. But if she can't see, she listens. The first time she calls Oruha, Su wonders if maybe this is what normal people are like. Oruha's voice on the phone is tinnier than the sounds that find their way from her club performances. After so many nights of listening it's almost strange not to hear her singing. But there's a smile in her voice, the sound of bemusement. Su doesn't like it when Oruha sounds suspicious. She doesn't like the quick quality of her tone. But Oruha listens and when Su tries, reaches as far as she can, "I love to hear you sing," somehow Oruha understands. The smile comes back through many conversations, but not the sharp questions. 

Su sits at night, the mechanical birds asleep somewhere in this aviary. The cage is dark like the sky is dark but without the love for stars. Su leans back against her confines and listens her eyes seeing only the ever upwards of the unbroken, delicate curve of her world. Su leans back against her confines and her ears see a woman so beautiful it makes Su want to cry. She's like a goddess or a fairy and Su winds her voice around her hands and holds it close like it might warm where her chest feels tight. Su doesn't sleep. The club stays open late, Oruha sings until the last call. Su wants to cheer with the crowd, "Encore, encore". Her clapping is engulfed in the massive silence of the room, disturbs the rustle of mechanical feathers and tree leaves. 

Su thinks, once four leaf clovers were good luck. Once birds weren't mechanical. These are things she knows but she does not see them. She looks foward to Oruha's voice. The afternoons its dripping wet out of the shower, the phone filled with the rustle of towels and the raspy breaths of steam. Su imagines drying her hair. She imagines Oruha with cascades of it. She thinks about the color, long and straight and silver. Imagines the steam is the soft sound of wings stirring the air and Oruha is like her, untouchable, powerful, beyond everything else Su can hear. 

Then there are the days Oruha's voice twinkles. She laughs through her words and they compose music together. Those days are sometimes the worst because Su cannot see the happiness on Oruha's face. She can feel it radiant on her skin but as warm as the air feels against her shoulders and toes when she closes her eyes, the only smiles she understands are sweet and sad. Oruha's voice is too bright for a face like that. She's too perfect to be carved in static and Su does not know how to construct her any other way. Other days Oruha's voice is heavy with the weight of knowledge. Su understands pain. There is a certain prickle, cold in the fingers and hot in the eyes that comes with mechanical playmates and the sounds of all the world filtering by like distortion of a carnival somewhere in the distance. Su never wonders if she is mechanical, but sometimes he wonders if there's a point to it. Oruha's voice doesn't share her opinion. Every moment is important Oruha's voice tells her, it pulls on her so she sits on the ground with her arms around her knees and thinks about potentialities. Take me away. 

Oruha loves, she loves a man Su has never met, and she loves a microphone Su has never seen, and Su believes Oruha loves her. Their song means many things, but that's one of them. Days when Oruha is gone and there is no singing, when Su's voice is lonely in the quiet. Lonely in the blur of the world, Su imagines how it could be. Oruha flying on her beautiful wings to Su's cage, alighting with her radiant voice and calling Su through the bars. Su would follow her siren call anywhere. And Oruha would hold Su tight like no one ever has and Su would finally understand the song they wrote. The day doesn't come. Su leaves the cage with a man she's never seen whose voice she never truly cared for. His eyes echo her own sadness and he speaks of a woman with flowing black hair who loved a micophone in a dive bar and sparkled in her laughter, even with the heavy weight of her knowledge. Su understands even if he doesn't. She's never imagined a future, not with a sad man or a perfect cage. The one dream she dreamt is a statue, static and with the wrong voice. It was never a very good fairytale and Su can only regret the lack of dark curls and beautiful eyes. Su isn't saving her luck, and she isn't dreaming.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Future [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15555843) by [Rhea314 (Rhea)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhea/pseuds/Rhea314)




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